Centax Outsources Transaction Data to TNS

In the two-year deal, TNS has migrated transactions from a dedicated in-house system to TNS IP Dial solution to transmit transactions between Centax’s central server and 3,500 electronic point-of-sale terminals located in retail and business outlets in Italy. Centax issues warranties to retail outlets and businesses guaranteeing more than one million cheques worth 0.7 billion euro per year. Retail staff activate requests for warranties using a free-phone telephone service or an electronic point-of-sale terminal. The decision to outsource to TNS follows Centax’ introduction of pioneering technology, which enables terminals to process cheques electronically rather than manually. With TNS IP Dial solution, warranty requests will be routed from terminals into TNS private network, where they are reformatted into the preferred IP protocol and directed to Centax’ central server. Centax was one of the first financial service companies in Italy to move to an IP solution. It enables the group to combine its payment and computerised systems on a single platform. Industry analysts estimate that approximately one in thirty cheque payments in Italy each year is rejected by banks for payment due to insufficient monies being in a customers’ account, or as a result of cheque fraud By scoring creditworthiness against information held in a continually updated data bank, Centax is able to issue or refuse a warranty covering a cheque transaction. Cheques protected by Centax, and not subsequently honoured by the bank, are refunded in full. Following 12 months development and a phased migration of terminals over to the TNS network, the solution is going live with Centax’ terminals nation-wide. TNS will also support the introduction of GPRS mobile terminals in stores. TNS pioneered its IP Dial solution as a way of enabling retailers to standardise back-office and payments systems onto one technology platform. IP Dial enables transactions from IP terminals to be routed into TNS’ private network, formatted appropriately and communicated securely with the financial institutions’ host computer systems, without the need for either to change their infrastructures.